The eyes of the nation will be trained on Selma, Alabama, this weekend as tens of thousands of people gather to watch President Obama address the nation on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

It’s important that we commemorate March 7, 1965, as the day the world was given a window into the brutality and the depravity of racism in the Deep South.

We must never forget the price that was paid to secure the vote for African Americans – or the incredible force of the people’s movement that finally put Jim Crow in a coffin. And we must never forget the martyrs, like Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose murder at the hands of an Alabama state trooper inspired the Selma march.